Lars Ulrich is to blame for a lot of things if you ask any Metallica fan or anyone who doesn’t like Metallica. From the days of Lars going against Limewire and Napster to Lars wanting to bury other bands, we know that he is said to have always been the issue.
Now, it looks like Lars is to blame for the classic record ‘…And Justice For All’ which is now being said to have been tarnished by the drummer. It’s hard to say it was truly ruined as it was one of Metallica’s best selling records ever, but it could have been better.
Via BlabberMouth, the mixer of the record called out Lars to say what he did that in his opinion, ruined the record. As it’s been told, Lars went up to the producer and told him to bring up the drum sound and then bring down the bass sound. The producer followed his orders and then Lars said to bring the bass down even more.
At this point, the producer felt that it was a joke because the bass was almost not able to be heard. Lars was serious and he meant business. The producer looked back at James Hetfield and Hetfield took himself out of the discussion entirely, so James is a bit to blame here too.
Jason Newstead was looking forward to hearing his hard work pay off, but sadly, it was never properly heard by him as the bass was almost completely cut from the record. Jason was furious and ready to ‘Go for throats’. Jason had every right to feel this way and this was the start to Jason Newstead no longer wanting to be part of the band due to how the politics worked when he wasn’t there to cast a vote in how things should go.
The mixer, Steve Thompson: “So I got the whole rhythm section together, vocals and everything like that, and then I felt, ‘Okay, now’s the time,'” he continued. “Hetfield was in there, [giving] thumbs up and everything like that. Then I brought Lars in. First of all, Lars hears it for about five to ten seconds, and he goes, ‘All right, stop right there.’ He goes, ‘What happened to my drum sound?’ I basically probably said something like, ‘You were serious?’ [Laughs] So I had to rearrange the drum sound to get it to where he wanted it again. He goes, ‘Okay, see the bass?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Drop it down in the mix.’ I said, ‘Why? It’s great.’ ‘Drop it down in the mix.’ ‘Okay.’ So I did it as a joke. [I] dropped it all the way down. He goes, ‘Drop it down another five or six dB’ from there, which could hardly hear it — you couldn’t hear it. I said, ‘Seriously?’ And I think I turned around to Hetfield, and he just went like this [raises both hands]. And then I remember having a conversation with Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch who were managing them. And I basically had a conversation, I said, ‘Listen, I love these guys. I think this band is fucking amazing. I don’t agree with what they want me to do with this. And I understand, it’s their record. They should get whatever they want. We were hired to get them what they want. But I just can’t see doing this.’ And we wound up giving ’em what they want.
